


never gonna take me alive (don't panic)

by socallmedaisy



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-07 00:12:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/424744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/socallmedaisy/pseuds/socallmedaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Nice feet, killer,” he says before he jogs back to his original group, and Quinn is pretty sure she’s never hated someone so much in her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	never gonna take me alive (don't panic)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Glee Rare Pairs Exchange on LJ with the prompt: 'characters as members of a sports team in some kind of competition.'

The first time she sees him he smirks at her and asks her if she’s looking for the cheerleader tryouts, and she curls her lip and points to the banner that says ‘Co-Ed Soccer’ hanging on the wall behind his table silently, daring him to say something else.

“You’re kinda scrawny,” he says, giving her the once over, and she rolls her eyes and huffs out a breath.

“I’m a winger,” she says, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m fast.”

“Right,” he says, with a grin that shouldn’t be charming but sort of is, “Whatever you say.”

“You’re an ass,” she says, and watches him laugh, knocking the soccer ball resting on the table between his hands.

“Haven’t I see you in my Women in Literature class?” he says after a moment, after he’s looked up at her face again.

“I doubt it,” she mutters under her breath even though now that he’s said it she thinks he might be right. “What are the chances you can read?”

He laughs again good naturedly and tosses her the clipboard with the sign-up sheet stuck to it. “Go get ‘em, killer,” he says and she stares at him in disbelief for a moment before she reaches for the pen.

Quinn’s scribbled her name and left the gym before she realises she didn’t even get his name.

-

His name is Mike Chang and it turns out he’s the captain from the previous year. He plays center forward, which at least explains the attitude, and the way the two remaining members of the squad from the year before talk about him it sounds like he scored all the goals and single-handedly won them the league, but Quinn still stands in the back while he talks, sandwiched between a blond boy with the biggest lips she’s ever seen and an asian girl she thinks lives down the hall from her, back in the dorms.

They’re part of a just-for-fun league so they don’t have a proper coach, and he wanders amongst them directing the training session, laughing and joking as he goes. She can hear his laughter floating over to her and it makes her angry for some reason she doesn’t understand, so she ends up kicking the ball at the girl from down the hall harder than she means to, so she has to dive to catch it, rolling a couple of times when she lands in the grass.

She hears Mike ask her if she’s considered playing goalie with a glance in her direction, and it just makes Quinn hate him even more.

She tries her best to avoid him while they’re doing warm-ups and start passing the ball in tight little triangles, running as they go, but he still spots her, and she sees the way his eyes light up as he keeps swapping places with people until he’s in her group, his feet a blur as he dances round the ball and then reverse passes it to her with no warning, so she has to stretch to stop it. Her touch is heavy and the ball bounces over to the blond boy from before, while she blushes and glares at Mike and watches him smirk that stupid charming grin again.

“Nice feet, killer,” he says before he jogs back to his original group, and Quinn is pretty sure she’s never hated someone so much in her life.

-

The next week he sits next to her in Women in Literature, and she angles her whole body away from him, hoping he’ll get the hint. He doesn’t though, just taps her on the shoulder and leans over to ask if she has a pen he can borrow and when she raises an eyebrow and looks at him he shrugs and says he forgot to bring one with him.

“How are you not flunking out?” she says, when he hides a yawn behind his hand and flicks through the copy of _Daisy Miller_ on the desk in front of him, eyes scanning quickly down the page almost like he’s reading it for the first time.

“I’m very charming,” he says through another yawn, and she tosses him a pen as she scoffs and turns away.

He nods off over the book all the way through class and she’s pretty sure he doesn’t even make one note through the whole hour, and when the Professor finally notices and calls him on it he ends up talking for five minutes about how Daisy’s cool because she doesn’t give a fuck, and how he thinks James killing her at the end should have made her a martyr instead of a pathetic little girl and even the teacher seems a little surprised that he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.

“Thanks for the pen, killer,” he says when they’re all standing up to leave, and Quinn stares after him for a full minute, absolutely stunned.

-

They play their first game against the community college in town, and she doesn’t do it on purpose but every ball she crosses in towards Mike seems to go over his head, and there’s never anyone following in at the back post, Sam trying his best but always just a couple of steps off the pace, unable to keep up with Mike and Quinn when they start running.

“Adjust your feet, killer!” Mike shouts when they’re covering back when their attack breaks down, “I’m not that tall.”

She flips him off when she runs past, and it’s easier to turn on the bravado than admit she can’t quite sort her feet out, so she shouts, “I keep forgetting your head isn’t actually that big...” and watches him laugh as he hovers on the halfway line, waiting for their team to get the ball back.

Tina intercepts the ball on the edge of their box and hits it long, looking for Mike, and he knocks it down to Quinn and runs, pulling two of their defenders away with him. She sees Sam making a run out of the corner of her eye and dances around their fullback, cutting inside as Mike raises his arm over his head to show he’s open.

She doesn’t need him though, so she just sets herself and curls the ball round the goalie and into the top corner, and after standing there stunned for a second that that was maybe the most technical thing she’s ever done, Sam clatters into her and envelops her in a hug while Mike stands at the far post with his hands on his hips, shaking his head with a smile on his face.

“Nice adjustment, killer,” he says when they’re jogging back to their own half so the game can restart and she smirks as she sets the ball down on the center spot and stands over it, waiting for Sam.

“Shame you can’t adjust your head,” she says, and somehow the way he laughs just makes her dislike him even more.

-

“I hate him!” Quinn says, when she and Tina are trekking back from the last of the laps Mike made them do as penance for being late to practice, her calves feeling like they’re on fire.

“He’s not that bad,” Tina says softly, pulling her jersey over her head when they get inside and using it to wipe at her face. “We were late.”

“Did I tell you he’s in my fucking modernism class now? And he, like, gets _Ulysses_ without even trying. I was up til 2am last night trying to read the fucking chapters for this week,” she undresses quickly, sliding her shorts down her hips and pulling her jersey over her head. “He read _Finnegans Wake_ just because, Tina. Just fucking because. And he offered to study with me, can you believe that? He offered to help.” She spits the word as she tugs a shirt over her head.

“Um,” Tina says, pausing with her sweatshirt around her neck. “He asked you on a study date?”

Quinn rolls her eyes so hard they nearly come out of her head. “He didn’t ask me on a date! God.” She huffs out a laugh, “Can you imagine?”

Tina just shuts her locker door and looks at her with a patient expression on her face. “Go study with him, Quinn. Before the sexual tension kills us all.”

Quinn stares after her when she walks away, mouth hanging open as she tries to think of something to say.

-

He has this really annoying habit of opening doors for her, like he has some kind of sixth sense about when she needs to go through a door and just appears with that stupid grin on his face.

“Don’t do that,” she says when he holds the door open for her on the way out of their modernism class, and he looks genuinely confused for a minute before he realises what she means.

“Just being polite, killer,” he says with a shrug, adjusting his books under his arm.

“Well stop it,” she huffs, and then he drops the door just as she’s about to go through it and laughs when she glares at him, before pulling it open again.

-

The final game of the season is against a team from Rhodes State and if they beat them they win the league for the second year in a row. Mike is insufferable in the locker room, trying to give them all some ridiculous pep talk, and in the end Quinn says, “So basically you want us to win?” with an arched eyebrow and Mike nods with a grin, gripping her shoulder as he goes past her on his way out onto the field.

She tries to ignore the way Tina looks at her when he does it, and jogs after her teammates, ignoring Tina’s shout for her to wait up.

They’re already 2-0 up when the stupidly tall center back on the opposite team clatters into Sam, bringing him down on the edge of the penalty area when he’s supposed to be tackling him, and Mike runs over immediately, pushing him away from Sam as he bends down to check he’s okay.

Sam gets to his feet a couple of minutes later, but the center back gets a yellow card and a talking to from the referee, and he stalks off like a kid in a sulk, a stupidly oversized kid, but a kid all the same. She wonders why the other team lets him play there because it’s obvious he doesn’t know what to do with his feet, and he narrowly avoids taking Mike out the same way he took out Sam when he’s running through on goal, Mike’s dancing feet the only thing that saves him.

“What the hell, dude?” Mike asks, spinning around to avoid him and nearly overbalancing, as the ball trickles through to the goalie harmlessly.

“Sorry, man,” the boy says, and he does sound genuinely apologetic, until one of his teammates pulls him away and glares at Mike as they go.

The game’s nearly over and they’re winning 4-1 when Sam passes the ball out to her and she skips inside the fullback like he isn’t there, heading for center field. She sees the tall boy coming before he gets to her, a look of determination on his face, and then he’s sliding towards her and she’s suddenly upended, a dull pain in her ankle as she braces her landing with her hands and and collapses in a heap.

“Hey!” she hears Mike shout, and then the tall boy is on the floor holding his face and Mike is shouting about reckless two footed tackles while the referee hurries over to calm things down.

She just grips her ankle to keep it steady while Tina kneels next to her and asks if she’s okay, and she breathes out shakily, watching Mike argue with the ref for a moment before the ref holds up a yellow card and then a red to the tall boy, and then turns to face Mike and lift the red card again.

“He could have broken her leg!” Mike shouts, but he starts to walk off the field anyway, muttering angrily to himself as he goes.

-

Mike’s gone by the time they come off the field, winners once again, and she looks everywhere for him as she hobbles back to her dorm, one arm around Tina’s neck to keep her steady as she goes.

He’s leaning against the hallway opposite her door when she gets there, reading _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ , and she just looks at him coolly when he kicks back off the wall looking down at her leg as he tucks his book into the duffel hanging off his shoulder.

“You’re an ass,” she says, when he doesn’t say anything.

“Yes,” he agrees.

“You like me,” she adds after she waits for him to elaborate.

“Yes,” he says again. She stares at him and he shifts nervously. “How’s the leg?” he asks finally, watching her lean back against the door for support.

“Bad but not broken,” she says and watches him absorb the news, something like relief passing over his face.

She sighs and twists her key in the lock. “You better come in,” she says, as the door swings open. “You have to teach me everything you know about James Joyce.”

She waits for him to step closer before she slides an arm round his neck, pulling him close until she finds his lips, taking him by surprise. She lets the kiss deepen, her tongue brushing against his for a second before she pulls back, and then smirks at the look on his face. “No funny business,” she says, reaching for his hand to tug him inside.

“You got it, killer,” he says, still sounding a little dazed, stumbling inside and kicking the door closed with his foot.


End file.
